LHC Physics Center

What I will be working on:

While at the LPC, I plan to look for new physics in fully-leptonic decays of top quark pairs and a top quark produced with a W-boson using the framework of standard model effective field theory (SMEFT). In particular, I plan to use simulation based inference techniques, which have shown to be effective for high-dimensional, precision-driven analyses across various academic disciplines. By incorporating these techniques, SMEFT-based studies can utilize un-binned analysis techniques, which will in turn expand the tool sets available for high-dimensional and high-precision research. Furthermore, I plan to expand the monitoring tools available for CMS Workflow Management and Data Management groups to help identify sources of slowdown for workflows as they progress through the various microservices. These tools will be critical after the high-luminosity upgrade to the LHC as data throughput is expected to grow by an order of magnitude.

My role in CMS past and present:

I first started working with the CMS experiment in the summer of 2017 where I had the opportunity to go to CERN to run various tests on the pixel front end controller in preparation for the long shutdown at the end of run II. My primary task was measuring the phase shift between hitting either the forward or barrel pixel detectors and pixel front end controller. My next project came during an REU at the University of Notre Dame in the summer of 2018. During this time, I worked on testing the efficiency of the CMS tracker after the high-luminosity upgrade to the LHC. Simulations of high pileup and high energy interactions were used to identify data the limits of the tracker stubs, the CMS Binary Chip, and the Concentrator Integrated Circuit. Starting the following fall at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I began working on training and pruning graph neural networks (GNN) aimed at learning to identify charged particle tracks to be used as a part of the level 1 trigger after the high-luminosity upgrade to the LHC. Network pruning had to be balanced as the GNN had to be small enough to fit on an FPGA chip while maintaining a high level of efficiency. Since 2020, I have been continuing my work with CMS as a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame where I have been working on looking for new physics in top quarks using the framework of standard model effective field theory. I have also been working on identifying and debugging common issues workflows face while processing through the various CMS workflow management microservices.